Today’s networks are an essential part of business, education, government, and home communications. Many residential, business, and mobile Internet Protocol (IP) networking trends are being driven largely by the combination of video, social networking, and advanced collaboration applications, termed “visual networking.” In fact, total Internet traffic has experienced dramatic growth in the past decade alone. Take a look at this interactive infographic from Cisco that shows key trends and forecasts the growth of global IP traffic from 2013 to 2018. You can choose a category and filter the geographic regions in the map to view the impact of global IP traffic. According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index (VNI), globally, there will be 20.6 billion networked devices by 2018, up from 12.4 billion in 2013. VNI is part of Cisco’s ongoing effort to forecast and analyze the growth and use of IP networks worldwide. VNI also forecasts that global Internet Protocol (IP) traffic will increase nearly three-fold over the next five years due to more Internet users and devices, faster broadband speeds and increased video viewing. Global IP traffic for fixed and mobile connections is expected to reach an annual run rate of 1.6 zettabytes – more than one and a half trillion gigabytes per year by 2018.

So who and what are responsible for the projected increase in overall internet traffic?

IDC’s SMB Survey comparing IT spending priorities in 2012 and 2013 concluded that the top three requirements for the network are performance, security and capacity.

How is designing a network different for a giant auctioneer different from other mid-sized enterprises?

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers is the world’s largest auctioneer of heavy equipment and trucks. They sell billions of dollars of unused and used equipment at hundreds of unreserved public auctions each year. What’s even more impressive is that they are able to do this with only 1300 employees worldwide. Read the full blog here Read More »

It’s always been important to remote workers to have a solution that provides both secure connectivity to their corporate network and simple user experience.With the recent Summer Blockbuster release of the Cisco Wireless Release 8.0, using the OfficeExtend 600 Series Access Points (OEAP-600) just got better. Here are a few of the enhancements that come to OEAP-600 with Release 8.0:

Firewall for personal networking – Provides port/application protection for personal network traffic that can be controlled by the end user. While the corporate firewall is protecting your corporate data traffic, you now have the capability to make your personal network traffic more secure also with this feature.

Split-tunnel for Internet traffic – Enables corporate clients to reach the Internet directly through the WAN instead of tunneling the data traffic through the corporate network. Provides the IT administrator the flexibility to configure the level of split-tunnel capability needed for their network. Together with the existing Split-tunnel for Printer feature the OEAP-600 provides maximum flexibility for printing and managing data traffic between the remote & corporate office.

QOS Enhancements for Voice traffic – Assigns high priority for voice packets for remote workers using the OEAP-600 and a VOIP solution in their home or remote office to enhance the remote workers voice call experience. Read More »

Smart Cities and the Internet of Everything have become commonly used terms over the past year or two. Both represent huge opportunities for both business growth and also for the delivery of better services and experiences for consumers and citizens alike. The size of this IoE opportunity has been widely predicted to exceed $14 Trillion[1] and within this just the Smart Cities component has been estimated to be worth $1,266 Billion[2] by 2019. With this scale it is little wonder that it attracts a lot of interest and therefore a lot of very interesting innovation.

The Internet of Everything (IoE) brings together people, process, data and things to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before. Smart and Connected Cities takes this and applies it in an urban environment to create new capabilities , richer experiences and unprecedented economic opportunity for businesses, individuals and countries.

While the Internet of Everything is about a connected grid of people, processes, data and things, what touches most of us is the ‘connecting people’ part of this equation.Within the greater IoE world, the Foundation for Delivering Next-Generation Citizen Services is how organizations and municipalities find innovative mechanisms to engage with us all. Read More »

Nuclear security is a high priority international threat today. The Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) 2014 took place in The Hague, the Netherlands, following the summits in Washington D.C (2010) and Seoul (2012).

Network Requirements:

An event of this magnitude required nothing but the best network solution. The venue had existing small networks across 5 buildings and 4 tents. They decided to disable the existing networks and setup a comprehensive Cisco network solution exclusively for this event. The major requirements were: Read More »

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